NOTE

As I continue to work on things away from this blog (which is a collection of Free-Time/Casual Online Writing, Remarks, And Notes By ME Whelan) and continue to figure out what goes and what stays of my existing online-writing, the de-emphasizing of one or another continues as well....

Saturday, May 30, 2015

A Story About A Very Stupid (But Funny, Apparently) Bunch of Scrap Papers

February 1, 2014 It was in the 1970's that my (now ex-) husband and I were just starting out, and he had just started his own business. One day something went on with the people he was working for, so I decided to draw a cartoon that I thought was funny. I slapped it, so the picture was really stupid but it made the point. Then I built on it and built on it and decided to turn it into a book. It was made of half-sized, lined, note paper. Each "page" had a drawing that was "whatever accomplished the joke" and didn't have the same style of drawing as any of the other pages. It was about as stupid as it gets, but my husband and I kept cracking up over it. It was mostly funny because it was so stupid, but also because it had gotten the two of us laughing and further building on the "hilarity of it all".

Since my husband knew that his partners would find something about their company and clients funny he showed it to them, and he said there was more laughing and building on the whole thing.

Between my husband and me that little "book" (a bunch of lined paper stapled together and ripped on a corner or two) just kept being something we'd mention, or dig out, every so often; and crack up all over again.

Eventually the whole joke got old, and life went on. We adopted a child and had a child and moved, and when - years later- we were moving we found the "book" again and started cracking up all over again. (I can't say it enough: This thing was SO STUPID!)

I think it surface one more child and another move later, and then it was never found again.

Life went on, all kinds of difficult things went on (more difficult things than the marriage could withstand. There was illness, tragedies, all kinds of difficult challenges that most people (even those who have plenty of difficulties) don't have so many of for so long.

So, houses were bought and sold. Moves were made. Different bunches of stuff were put in different storage places. More moves were made, more time went on; and it was only within the last five or so months that my daughter was at one of the storage places, finally being re-united with some belongings that were from her childhood. My sons were there too, but it was my daughter who I was talking to a few days after they'd all been there, and who said she'd found this odd "thing" that she didn't know what it was. (She's in her late twenties now.) She said, "I think it looks kind of like your handwriting in some of it, but I'm not sure. It's really funny, though, but I don't know what is." (I had whipped up this thing so carelessly and fast my writing didn't always look like mine.") Anyway, as she described some of the "key words" in it I started to ask her a little more, and then I knew, for certain, she had found the "book".

She said, "Anyway, I have it. I'll bring it the next time I come." I just figured if she did I'd look at it again before deciding to toss it in the trash. This thing hadn't just survived time and travel and moves. It had survived "weather situations" and a few other things that some of her, her brothers', my, and/or their father's "real" belongings had. There was irony in the fact that of all we've all lost, and all the tragedy and sadness, this stupid little bunch of stapled-together sheets of paper had survived.

In any case, she brought it and some other things she'd gotten on her next visit. Her father happened to be here too, so when my daughter brought out the yellowed, lined-paper, "book" we all started looking at it; and although my daughter was laughing, her father and I were once again doubled over with the kind of laughter that makes a person worry she's going to pass out. As it all died down we started again - and again. I don't know how many times we'd start laughing all over again, which made my daughter laugh more as well.

Again, this " book" was SO STUPID, it's not as if I could make a story about what an amazingly skilled "comic-book" creator I am. You'd think I might feel sad to look at all those stupid cartoons I put together back when my husband I were just starting out. It didn't. It was mostly very strange to me to have my daughter find the thing, decide it might be worth saving, and then be there in the room laughing with us.

My daughter knew that it wasn't hers to keep, so she left it on the table. Her father didn't say he wanted it, so I placed in it a plastic bag and just put it away somewhere. Why I kept it, I don't know. Was it that we'd laughed so hard and so long and so often about this stupid thing so long ago? I don't think so. I think it was more because - with all we've been through, individually and as an "ex-couple" but also family; somehow that stupid and worn and yellowed "book" had survived, but so, too, had our ability to laugh at the very same thing that we laughed at back before so much had gone on.

I guess this story is about how sometimes amidst the ruins of one kind or another something that one would never expect could have survived just does. You know?

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"Writing isn't always about just getting the words down, or out, or even read. It is about pulling from the universe just the right number and combination of words and allowing them to join hands to come to life."

Note I

As I continue to reorganize, trim down, consolidate, further develop, and/or otherwise work on any number of my own blogs/sites, there may be the occasional "No Page Exists" message on this blog. That's temporary and not something I can avoid at this stage in my reorganizing "project".

I've got my Google+ profile settings so that all but this blog and a couple of other things are hidden from the public. Because of that, but because I don't particularly want to keep some of my writing a big secret, I'm including a few links that will get anyone who may be at all interested to a page that is far less of an apparent dead end than my Google profile is right at this time. Here's one link:

In order to keep this "explanatory note" relatively brief, I'll write a post (February 21, 2016) to further make it clear what I'm doing with this blog. My plan is to revise and/or delete this note in the very near future, when it no longer seems necessary to include it (or parts of it).

Because I've transitioned from having once used a pen-name to (in more recent times) using my real name, I'm also including a link to my "pen-name blog".

"The Writing-Reorganizing Project Continues" is the title of the February 21, 2016 post, to which I referred above.

Note II

What's On This Blog

This blog, as its title suggests, is a collection of online writing and random notes/thoughts of its author. Since material posted on or before February 21, 2016 has been imported from a number of my other sites/blogs there's a little bit of clean-up that still needs to be done on those posts, particularly with regard to some formatting issues. I'll be working on improving the presentation of the older posts. There won't (or at least shouldn't) be any issues with material posted on or after the date mentioned here.

Note III

The following is a transfer from another one of my blogs/sites. It appears more attractively presented elsewhere, but I've chosen not to link to that because a) I don't want this blog to be a "dreaded" "doorway page", and b) I'm trying to "bury" (without completely deleting, at least for now) some of the sites where posts already appear. It know there are easier, more automated, ways to transfer material, but with a large variety and number of different types of material to be transferred, I've found that in some instances "more automated" means "further, even if relatively minor, complicating things". In other words, I have a real online mess on my hands. I don't want more of the same, which, for my purposes/aims, often means limiting the "automating".

For now, I'll mark transfer posts as such. (Oh, and way at the bottom of the blog there's a link to the latest incarnation of an old blog. The link is there for my own convenience as I work on things here Links on this sidebar are old stuff. I'll do something with links to new stuff some other time.)

.

OTHER WRITING

"Other Writing" is a post title (and label) I've used on two posts ("Other Writing A" and "Other Writing B") with links to a big mix of (what else) other writing I have that falls under the category of "free time" or "casual" online. There's also a third post related to other writing, and that describes what much of that "other writing" is and why I included the other-writing-related posts, all of which are dated February 24, 2016.

(In a nutshell, I want those links available on here but don't want to highlight them.)

ABOUT 'WORDCRAFTER"

If you've arrived here via my HubPages "WordCrafter09" profile or from any of my pen-name pages here's a link to a blog that I set up as I was making the transition from a long-time, well established, pen-name to using my own name. Until very recently I've linked from my "WordCrafter09" profile to the blog, but since I've made substantial progress with the transition I decided to de-emphasize that blog (while still making a link to it available - at least for awhile longer).

It's not so much "blog" as it is part dumping ground and part explanation. In any case, here's the link (for now, anyway...):